Resource Library

This guide is designed to support administrative leaders in states and other jurisdictions in using data to assess and identify ways to improve their service array.

Explore the supportive relationship between a youth and her attorney.

Discover how to examine and drill down into state data to build understanding of what’s happening in your child welfare system.

Reveals how advocating for youth makes a difference in system change and in the advocates’ own lives. The Director of Policy and Advocacy at NMCAN and a youth advocate talk about their shared experience in testifying as expert witnesses for state legislative committees and how it created a strong bond between them.

Learn about various instruments used to measure well-being for program, case planning, and evaluation purposes.

Learn the importance of effective, ongoing collaboration between child welfare agencies and community-based partners.

Use this tool with your prevention planning team to prepare for and tackle the adaptive challenges that many states face as they develop and implement prevention plans. 

Learn about the importance of successful collaboration and engagement for implementing prevention-focused systems.

Explore considerations for equitable, inclusive, and data-driven problem exploration.

Explores the second task of creating a data plan to investigate the problem further. Creating a well-thought-out data plan helps the team plan for exploring the identified problem and move toward identifying a possible root cause or causes.

Presents the third task of collecting and analyzing data identified in the data plan to help answer research questions. Examining data helps teams tell a more complete story and understand the scope and impact the problem is having on the community.

This brief addresses both "identifying a problem" and "gathering data and exploring the problem indepth" in the first phase of the Change and Implementation Process.

Introduces the fourth task of identifying possible contributing factors and root causes using different methods. A root cause analysis is a structured approach to understand why a problem occurs using data. Understanding why a problem or unmet need exists helps teams better identify the potential solutions to it.

Explores the fifth task of exploring possible root causes and using data to validate them. Taking time to revisit data, helps teams align on true root cause(s) before moving towards possible solutions.

Presents the sixth and final task, isolating the root cause or causes to address. By isolating, or selecting, the root cause or causes to address as part of a change initiative, teams are able to consider feasible solutions to address the problem.